Denialism Blog

Category: Science

  • It Is Time For A Presidential Debate On Science

    We must adapt to the fact that over the last few decades it has become critical that our politicians and policymakers understand science and implement policy that is consistent with scientific facts. And it is past time that we made science enough of a priority to merit a presidential debate on science. The need is clear, these days policymakers must be able to respond in an informed fashion to new technologies, new scientific findings, and potential disasters (such as climate change). Despite the need for a scientifically-literate political leadership, we have a president who says the jury is still out on evolution, who promotes failed abstinence-only sex education programs, and refuses to make any substantive changes to address global warming.

    We must do a better job vetting our politicians for scientific literacy and competence.

    Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum at the Intersection have been working on a solution to this problem. They’ve gathered a coalition of luminaries to support a presidential debate on science in 2008. The mission statement reads:

    Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy.

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    I agree wholeheartedly, the citizens of the United States deserve to know whether or not their political leaders are scientifically-informed, or actively hostile to science. Science has become too important to just be an afterthought in political elections, we must put it front-and-center. This is a brilliant idea and I’m thankful for Chris and Sheril’s leadership in putting this together.

    I know what question I’d ask at such a debate. Which candidates would encourage congress and provide funding to bring back the OTA. After all, having a scientifically-literate leader is nice, but laying the foundation for long-term scientific policymaking is better.

    You can support the scientific debate too. Let’s make this a reality.

  • Reprogramming adult cells into pluripotent stem cells – what do these new results mean

    Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchYou guys might have noticed I’ve been quiet lately, that’s because I’ve scheduled a thesis defense and am under deadlines. However, I couldn’t let these two (1) papers(2) on reprogramming of human adult cells into stem cells slip by without some comment (NYT piece here)

    These reports are a follow-up on landmark animal studies that we discussed previously that showed that expressing 4 genes in cells obtained from adult animals you could induce them to form embryonic stem cell (ESC) like cells that researchers dubbed induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). At the time we noted several obstacles to the practicability of this technology, and these papers represent success in overcoming the first – transferring the technique into human cells.

    I admit I’m surprised they were able to do so so quickly. But this turned out to be a nice example of the discovery of common exploitable pathways between humans and other animals.

    Below the fold I’ll go over the differences between these studies and the previous animal studies, the evidence of the pluripotent nature of these cells, unresolved problems with this technology and why this isn’t a victory for the anti-ES cell crusaders.

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  • The Origin of HIV in the Americas

    Blogging on Peer-Reviewed ResearchThe mainstream media has been reporting on this paper (open access at PNAS) on the hunt for the origin of HIV in the Americas.

    The surprising result was the finding that HIV first came to the United States from Haiti (rather than the previous origin which was thought to be a flight attendant from Canada) between 1966 and 1972, and flew under the radar of public health authorities for over a decade. The infection, spread initially by heterosexuals from Haiti, went undetected from as early as 1966 until 1981 and then only because it had jumped into a highly susceptible population. This article is rather humbling, because in perhaps the medically advanced country in the world, it evaded detection for so long until it finally created an epidemic in the male homosexual population.

    So how did they figure this out?
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  • The Coolest Picture You'll See of a Nose All Year

    National Geographic brings us the “best science images of 2007” which includes this amazing CT reconstruction of the nose and sinuses.

    Science magazine has the full set, but is behind a paywall.

    Via BoingBoing and Neurophilosophy

  • Two Court Decisions for Science

    There have been two interesting court decisions, I think both decided correctly for science this week. In the first, a federal court has decided states may regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. In particular, one statement from the judge seemed to come straight from the deck of cards.

    “There is no question that the GHG (greenhouse gas) regulations present great challenges to automakers,” Judge William Sessions III, sitting in the U.S. District Court in Burlington, wrote at the conclusion of his 240-page decision.

    He added, “History suggests that the ingenuity of the industry, once put in gear, responds admirably to most technological challenges. In light of the public statements of industry representatives, (the) history of compliance with previous technological challenges, and the state of the record, the court remains unconvinced automakers cannot meet the challenges of Vermont and California’s GHG regulations.”

    Exactly correct. They raised the same complaints for seatbelts, crumple-zones, airbags, and CAFE standards, and each time their claims of imminent bankruptcy have been shown to be overblown. If anything, it should be good for the industry. As Toyota has become the largest automobile manufacturer in the world with consistently rising profits, the American car manufacturers have locked themselves into making bigger less efficient cars and consistently show losses and diminishing size. If anything, this kick in the pants will help car manufacturers in this country survive and compete with the cars from Japan.

    The second, from the NYT, a New Jersey court has refused to decide that life “begins” at conception.

    A doctor is under no obligation to tell a pregnant woman that she is carrying “an existing human being” before performing an abortion, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled today in a decision that had been eagerly awaited by both foes and supporters of abortion rights in this country.

    The 5-to-0 decision came in a case brought in 1996 by Rosa Acuna, who was 29 years old and married when she and her husband, who already had two children, agreed to an abortion about six to eight weeks into her pregnancy.

    People on both sides of the abortion debate said that Mrs. Acuna’s medical malpractice case was essentially asking the court to weigh in on the long-debated issue of when life begins.

    Mrs. Acuna charged that the doctor, Dr. Sheldon C. Turkish, did not provide her with “material medical information” before she and her husband signed a consent form allowing him to perform the procedure. Specifically, she said in her lawsuit, the doctor had a duty to tell her that the procedure would “terminate the life of a living member of the species Homo sapiens, that is a human being.”
    …
    Because there is no consensus within the medical community, or even in the general public, about when life begins, the justices wrote, there is therefore no legal basis for requiring doctors to tell patients “that an abortion results in the killing of a family member.”

    Not only is this fundamentally stupid claim on the part of the plaintiffs, like this 29-year-old woman did not know what an abortion is, but the idea of a court decided when life begins is offensive. I also disagree that there is no consensus (or that there can not be one) within the scientific community. Scientists should acknowledge that life does not “begin”, but is instead continuous from parent to child, and the real question is when we consider a human life to have value. There is no stage in human reproduction in which the components are not living. The real issue is fundamentally religious, and should therefore be outside the purview of the courts, that is when does someone get a soul? Or in more secular terms, become a human being? That is unanswerable, unmeasurable, and should not be determined by any court or government.

    So good news from the courts this week, stepping in where they should, and staying out of where they don’t belong.

  • What's killing the bees? IAPV apparently

    Another update on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the surprisingly devastating attack on the honeybee that occurred last year that was responsible for huge losses of bee colonies and a great deal of concern about crops pollinated by this insect.

    Originally we mocked the idea that CCD was caused by global warming and alarmist calls from people like Bill Maher that suggested a correlation between CCD and cell phone use (ha!). Critical at the time were initial experiments showing that irradiation of hives allowed recolonization, suggesting an infectious process. Now it seems this has been confirmed.

    Signs of colony collapse disorder were first reported in the United States in 2004, the same year American beekeepers started importing bees from Australia.

    The disorder is marked by hives left with a queen, a few newly hatched adults and plenty of food, but the worker bees responsible for pollination gone.

    The virus identified in the healthy Australian bees is Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) — named that because it was discovered by Hebrew University researchers.

    Although worker bees in colony collapse disorder vanish, bees infected with IAPV die close to the hive, after developing shivering wings and paralysis. For some reason, the Australian bees seem to be resistant to IAPV and do not come down with symptoms.

    Scientists used genetic analyses of bees collected over the past three years and found that IAPV was present in bees that had come from colony collapse disorder hives 96 percent of the time.

    So far the data is correlative, but it’s a very strong correlation, as well as a highly plausible biological explanation. Introduction of the pathogen to healthy colonies will be the definitive test.

    Here is the paper in Science, as well as more perspective from Bug Girl.

  • WSJ and anti-government conspiracies

    Leave it to AEI writing for the WSJ editorial page to allege a grand conspiracy of the government against pharmaceutical companies. Their proof? The government wants to compare the efficacy of new drugs to older ones to make sure they’re actually better.

    The reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip), created in 1997 to cover children from lower-income families who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, is up for renewal this fall. Tucked into page 414, section 904 of the House bill is a provision to spend more than $300 million to establish a new federal “Center for Comparative Effectiveness” to conduct government-run studies of the economic considerations that go into drug choices.

    The center will initially be funded through Medicare but will soon get its own “trust fund.” The aim is to arm government actuaries with data that proponents hope will provide “scientific” proof that expensive new drugs are no better than their older alternatives. The trick is to maintain just enough credibility around the conduct of these trials to justify unpopular decisions not to pay for newer medicines.

    While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this sort of fiscally minded clinical research, Medicare is no ordinary payer: It dictates decisions made in the private market. So as the government begins tying its own payment decisions to the results of its own studies, there’s a great temptation to selectively interpret data and arbitrarily release results. Clearly, this obvious conflict of interest demands even more outside scrutiny and transparency than has been the usual fare when it comes to government research.

    Yes, because private research is so much more transparent than studies performed by the government. Gottlieb’s example of a government hit on expensive drugs, was of all things, the Women’s Health Initiative.

    More insane conspiratorial nonsense from AEI and the WSJ below the fold.
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  • Mice and Research

    There’s a nice little article in the Washington Post on mice in research. It’s interesting the things you learn from a piece like this. For instance, I never realized the origin of the black 6 line was from essentially a hobby breeder in New England. I also like the little slide show of various mouse strains. I recognize most of them, in particular, the ob/ob obese mouse (he’s easy to pick out).

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    Light stuff but interesting for those who do mouse work. And I couldn’t resist making an lolmouse:
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  • Denialist Deck Applied: PRISM

    It’s that time again. Bora’s got the scoop on this new organization PRISM (Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine). They purport to be the saviors of scientific publishing, protecting us from the evil of open access. But how much do you want to bet they’re the same old industry lobbying group, disguising themselves as actors in the public interest? Well, there’s an easy way to tell. Let’s apply the deck of cards!

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  • Welcome Zooillogix

    Go say high to Zooillogix, another two-brother team science blogging away here under the auspices of Seed. I will enjoy their blog, as long as they stay away from too many pictures of creatures with more than 4 legs (tentacles don’t count). The African Booze tree should be your first stop there.

    And that makes me think of another plug. Everybody should be reading Seed magazine. I got my first copy as a super-special scienceblogger last month and I love it. It’s a great magazine, with beautiful graphical design, and some of the best-written general interest science articles I’ve read.